Spam

Background

Spam is a brand name for a canned meat product containing ham, pork, salt,
flavorings, and preservatives that are mixed and cooked under vacuum
pressure. There are other brands of similar canned pork meat products, but
Spam—made by Hormel Foods Corporation—is the original and
the best-selling of the brands.

The standard Spam can is brick-shaped and holds 7 oz (198 g) of meat. A
2-oz (57-g) serving contains 170 calories, provides 7 g of protein, 140
calories of fat, and has 0.75 g of sodium. It contains small amounts of
cholesterol and iron. Americans eat approximately 3.8 cans per second. Two
American plants produce 44,000 cans of Spam every hour. Hawaii consumes
the most Spam in the world—about four million cans yearly (it is
particularly popular in sushi).

Spam is an important protein source and economical as well. Unopened cans
require no refrigeration and Spam has an indefinite shelf life because it
is heat-sealed within the tin. It can, therefore, be shipped all over the
world without spoiling. Thus, it is an important food source in many
places where fresh meat is difficult to obtain or expensive (such as
Hawaii and Guam). Spam has become a kitschy favorite with Spam t-shirts
and cookbooks selling quite well. Spam has also made it onto the worldwide
web with several websites dedicated to the product. The term spam has also
come to mean unwanted junk e-mails received on personal computers.

History

Spam was first released onto the American market in 1937. Jay Hormel, the
son of a successful Minnesota meat-packing house owner, was an energetic
young man with big plans for his father's company. Hormel brought
out canned ham in 1926. When his product was imitated, Hormel added spices
to make it distinct. In the early 1930s, many companies were producing
canned pork in large containers. Hormel's competition included
lips, snouts, even ears in their meats but Hormel refused to use these
refuse parts. Instead, he used the shoulder of the pig (a cut of meat
rarely used because of its time-consuming removal from the bone).
Hormel's meat was superior and more expensive than the
competition's, but once opened it was indistinguishable. Hormel
sought a way to seperate his product from the rest, and he decided to try
two things: reduce the size of the can so it was family-sized and design a
distinctive label.

Hormel's first experimental 12-oz (340-g) cans of this pork
luncheon meat turned out to be 8 oz (227 g) of meat and 4 oz (113 g) of
useless juice. As the heat cooked the meat in the sealed can, cells broke
down and released an excessive amount of juice. Hormel tried many things
to reduce the juice. Ultimately he discovering that it was not enough to
put it in a can that was vacuum sealed, but the meat must also be mixed in
a vacuum in order to minimize the juice released while cooking.

The new luncheon meat was not available for a while, awaiting a marketable
name and an iconic label. After much dispute, the name Spam seemed
perfect. Most believe it to be a combination of the words spiced and ham,
but the original product contained no ham. (Hormel later added ham to the
mixture because so many thought it was already in the product.) Upon
release the meat was
not an instant seller, but Spam was touted for its value and convenience.

By 1941, 40 million cans of Spam had been sold. During World War II, Spam
was sent overseas to feed American G.I.s. Hormel supplied Allied troops
with 15 million cans of Spam per week throughout the war. World
leaders—including Eisenhower, Margaret Thatcher, and Nikita
Khrushchev—credited Spam for its effectiveness. After the war,
Hormel actively advertised the product, getting big names to sing its
praises. Plants overseas also began producing Spam. By 1959, Hormel had
manufactured its billionth can. By 1962, the 12-oz (340-g) can was joined
by a 7-oz (198-g) can for single people and small families. Other
innovations included Spam with cheese chunks and smoke-flavored product
(1972) and Spam-Lite (1992). A major re-design of the label occurred in
1997, and both the old and new version entered the Smithsonian.

Raw Materials

The primary ingredient in Spam is chopped pork shoulder meat mixed with
ham. About 90% of Spam is pork from a pig's shoulders. The
remaining 10% (or so) comes from the pig's buttock and thigh,
better known as ham. This ratio varies according to ham and pork prices.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture does not permit any nonmeat fillers in
lunchmeat, nor does it allow pig snouts, lips, or ears. The second
ingredient is salt, added for flavor and for use as a preservative. Also,
a small amount of water is used to bind all ingredients together. Sugar is
also included for flavor. Finally, sodium nitrate is added to prevent
botulism and acts as a preservative as well. It is the sodium nitrite that
gives Spam its bright pink color—without it, Spam would discolor
and become brown.

The Manufacturing Process

Pigs are no longer butchered by the Hormel Company, so meat is purchased
from dealers and brought into the plant. Pork shoulders and ham are
brought into the plant and cut apart. The pork shoulders are put into a
powerful hydraulic press that literally squeezes the meat off the bone.
The deboned meat is put into a large gondola or basket. Ham, however,
must be cut away from the bone by hand. The meat-cutters remove and sort
the meat from the shanks in the ham trim lines. The whitest, fattiest
pieces are put into a large gondola marked "white," while
meatier pieces are hand-sorted into one marked "red." The
gondolas remain in a refrigerated area until they are needed.

Next, the gondolas are wheeled from the cold storage area and onto the
main floor. The meat is transferred to a crane-like machine and then
dumped into a large metal trough equipped with a drill bit. There, the
drill bit thoroughly grinds the red and white pieces dumped in the
trough. The batch is weighed (usually about 8,000 lb [3,628 kg] at this
point) and passed under a metal detector (to catch a stray knife or
mixing component). A small sample of Spam is analyzed to ensure it has
the right combination of pork to ham and white to red pieces.

The ground meat is then distributed by the gondolas into several vacuum
mixers. When these mixers are in the open position, they look like giant
gas grills, but they are equipped with a refrigerated ammonia outer core
that brings the meat temperature down to below freezing (32°F
[0°C]). Then, the other ingredients in Spam—salt, sugar,
water, and sodium nitrite—are added. The mixer lid is closed,
creating an airtight seal, and the batch is mixed. The reason the vacuum
is induced, the meat chilled, and the salt added is to reduce the amount
of juice released by the meat when it is cooked. If too much liquid is
released during cooking, the can would contain a large amount of
gelatin.

While the Spam is being mixed, machines elsewhere are pushing empty,
upside-down Spam cans off storage pallets one layer at a time. The plain
silver cans are pushed onto a conveyor belt and sent toward the filler.

Nearly 1,000 lb (454 kg) of Spam is manually unloaded from the first
mixer, dumped into receivers, and fed through pipes. The mixture moves
through the pipes until it reaches the cone-shaped can fillers. As the
cans travel undeneath the fillers, a device picks each one up and
deposits the raw, ground Spam into the can (from the

Spam is a mixture of ground pork meats, seasonings, and other
ingredients that have been cooked under vacuum pressure.

bottom) in one motion. The can is filled as the machine lifts it.

The can is sealed at a closing machine. They are then stamped with an
identifying code so that the product can be traced back to the
manufacturer.

Now, the closed cans head to the six-story-tall hydrostatic cooker. Spam
is cooked in the can by very hot water within the cooker. The cans
approach to cooker in a line, an arm swings out and pushes 24 cans onto
a shelf. The shelf moves upward, and an arm swings out an pushes another
group of cans onto a shelf. In two hours, 66,000 thousand cans will
travel up and down 11 chambers in this huge cooker as they are heated,
sterilized, washed, and cooled.

As the cans leave the hydrostatic cooker, they are now cool and ready
for labeling. The labels sit at the end of the cooker in long rolls. An
automatic labeler attaches a polypropelene film label on each can, and
the labeler cuts the label to the correct length.

The cans are now ready for boxing. Twenty-four cans are fed onto flat
pieces of cardboard, and a box is formed around the cans using the
cardboard. The boxes are moved, and when a palette is filled with boxes,
the entire pallet is shrink-wrapped. The cans are stamped with a date
and other identifying numbers. A huge robot crane, driven by computer,
transfers the pallet to a rack of shelving in the building. When the
pallets get to the loading dock, then they are hoisted into the shelves
by machines.

The Spam cans cannot be shipped out for 10 days. One of every 1,000 cans
produced must undergo extensive testing to make certain the meat was
properly cooked. If there are no problems, the cans may be sold.

Quality Control

Hormel would likely agree that Spam begins with quality pork and ham.
Hornel no longer supplies its own meat for Spam, but the company chooses
the meat carefully. Meat-cutters
who cut the meat from the ham carefully perform their tasks and throw the
pieces into the appropriate gondola. Also, the huge hydrostatic cooker has
an alarm that trips if the computer detects there is any problem with the
batch. The workers must fix that problem within three minutes. If they
don't, the entire batch's viability is in question.

Portions of each batch are examined to make sure the batch has the right
amount of pork shoulder to ham. The U.S. Department of Agriculture does
not permit any Spam cans to leave the processing plant for 10 days. One
out of every 1,000 cans be subjected to a 100°F (38°C) test to
see if the can bulges or shows any other signs of improper cooking. The
bacteria content is also tested. Finally, taste tests are routine at
Hormel Foods Corporation. Every Friday all executives involved in Spam
production meet to visually inspect (and sometimes taste) several
different batches of Spam produced during the week.

The Future

Since Spam was first released it has undergone many transformations. From
plain Spam to Turkey Spam to Spam-Lite. People are coming up with endless
recipes that call for Spam, and Hormel is trying to incorporate every
consumer's need into their product development. Spam with less
sodium is now available. The launch of Hormel's website dedicated
to Spain now provides consumers with a catalog devoted to Spam and Spam
labeled products.